After realizing that in many cases some social engineering can be far more efficient than a piece of malware that looks for zero-day vulnerabilities or unpatched weaknesses, cybercriminals began making phone calls to unsuspecting individuals, warning them of false threats and urging them to install specially crafted software that gives them access to a system.

David Jacoby, a Kaspersky Lab Expert, witnessed firsthand how these crooks operate and how they try to convince users into installing shady apps on their computers. This certain incident took place in Sweden which means that these fraudulent organizations expanded their activities to other countries besides the US and the UK.

Jacoby explains that he received a suspicious phone call from a man pretending to be a technician from the Windows Security Support Department.

“When I started to talk to him he asked me in English with a indian accent if I had a computer at home, and of course I said ‘yes’. Then he started to explain that my computer had been compromised and that my firewall was just protecting me against external threats and not internal threats,” he writes.

“At this time I knew that something strange was going on, and I started to ask more questions about the malware and trying to get more information about them, then at this point he immediately hung up the phone.”

While these scams are not exactly new, the crooks realized that there’s a potential gold mine that needs to be exploited and that’s probably why their activities were amplified and expanded to target other countries.

In certain situations, you may receive a call from someone that speaks the national language of your country, but you may also be called by someone who wants to talk to you in English. In the latter scenario, most likely you are being targeted by an international scheme.

Whichever the case may be, you are advised never to install software after being requested by someone over the phone, except for the situation where you reached out first to a legitimate company.